VQR Online

Once, I was a daughter of this place:
daughter of Gwen, granddaughter
of Leretta, great of Eugenia McGee.

Somewhere in the post-Katrina wreckage and disarray of my grandmother’s house, there is a photograph of my brother Joe and me, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We are at a long-gone nightclub in Gulfport, the Terrace Lounge, standing...

On her wedding day, a bride should slip a good penny into her shoe
to ensure luck and wealth during the life of her marriage.

We’re at the Potts Mountain Shooting Range
on a hot day in March, blowing ammo,

I wanted to say I have come home
to bear witness, to read the sign
emblazoned on the church marquee—

This is Max Rameau seizing the moment: hunting down foreclosed houses left idle by the banks, or by the city, so that he can take them over. Rameau contends that everyone, no matter what, deserves a home, and he considers the surplus of...

This week they are painting
the North Gulfport water tower.

You are the country at war and the city ablaze.
You are the flags lining Fourth Street and the singer

In Juárez, people vanish. They leave a bar with the authorities and are never seen again. They leave their homes on an errand and never return. They go to a meeting and never come back. They are waiting at a bus stop and never arrive at...

Here is my solitary city. This island of steel
and avenue. Towers with skeletons of organ